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"Unbounded liberty in matters of religion," which means the abolition of the Establishment, promises to be "very favorable to the best interests of mankind." So far the book might well be called an edition of Rousseau for English Nonconformists; but there are divergences of import.
Their leaders had had high social positions in their English homes, and their ministers were chiefly graduates of the universities, some of whom were fine scholars in both Hebrew and Greek, had been settled in important parishes, and would have attained high ecclesiastical rank had they not been nonconformists, opposed to the ritual, rather than the theological tenets of the English Church as established by Elizabeth.
The first attacks upon them struck at their religion; but the subsequent legislative acts which successively ruined the woolen trade, barred nonconformists from public office, stifled Irish commerce, pronounced non-Episcopal marriages irregular, and instituted heavy taxation and high rentals for the land their fathers had made productive these were blows dealt chiefly for the political and commercial ends of favored classes in England.
This privilege was refused, but as the poor prisoner, a mere youth, was taken ill with smallpox, his sentence was remitted. Tutchin became one of the most pertinacious and vehement enemies of the House of Stuart. Delaune's Plea for the Nonconformists was very fatal to its author, and landed him in Newgate, where the poor man died.
I owed to him a personal acquaintance with the leading politicians of the town. John Skirrow Wright of whom Dawson always spoke as the "great Liberal party" a big, noisy, vehement, jovial man, whom the phrase accurately fitted; Dr R. W. Dale, the Archbishop of the Nonconformists of his day and many others. On one memorable afternoon, he introduced me to John Bright.
My father and grandfather were Conservative members before me, and I come of a line which has always feared God, honoured the King, paid its tithes, and tried to do something for the poor; and which regards Radicals, Socialists, Nonconformists, and criminal lunatics as much the same class of person.
Ought an attempt to be made to meet the views of the Nonconformists by modification of the Liturgy or was it best to put a peremptory stop to agitation and discussion by restoring the ritual and the usages of the Church unchanged, so that the historic weight of continuity should be added to the authority of the law?
Compton answered for the High Churchmen, goaded at last into rebellion by the Declaration of Indulgence. The Earl of Devonshire, the Lord Cavendish of the Exclusion struggle, answered for the Nonconformists, who were satisfied with William's promise to procure them toleration, as well as for the general body of the Whigs.
The quality of the early settlers in South Australia, gave Sir George Grey great trust in the new Anglo-Saxondom to be built up in the south. Many of them were Nonconformists, which suggested to him the Puritan founding of New England. As a body they had a worth, a sincerity, a true ring which could not fail of fine records.
It had humiliated him by forcing him to cancel his public declaration in favour of the Nonconformists. It gave counsel in foreign affairs, and met the king's leanings towards Lewis by expressions of its will for a contest with France.
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